Meta-Tuning Justice
Game Design and Black Youth Agency

Laquana Cooke (Author)

9781625349361

Paperback / softback, published 31 July 2026

232 pages, 17 illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.286 kg

"A rare and rigorous account of how games operate as cognitive and social systems, not merely as texts or technologies. Cooke shows how players learn what futures are imaginable through play, and how those learned expectations can be disrupted, redesigned, and reoriented. This work provides both a sharp diagnostic framework and a generative set of tools for analyzing and redesigning the cognitive and social work games perform."—Constance Steinkuehler, Games Learning Society (GLS) Center Co-Director, University of California, Irvine

Exploring how Black youth are reshaping game design to dismantle stereotypes and spark social change

In the early 2000s, digital gaming rose to cultural and economic prominence. Communities of color, however, and especially Black youth, were largely excluded from gaming culture. The rare Black character in games tended to reinforce stereotypes, while racial bias was often surreptitiously embedded in game design platforms—what decolonial scholars call “whitestream” computing. Progressive game design education initiatives and new technologies have recently begun to dismantle these barriers. Yet, because biases remain, historically excluded young people still need to actively reconfigure these digital spaces to fully develop and convey their own perspectives.

In Meta-Tuning Justice, digital rhetoric scholar Laquana Cooke explores how Black youth express cultural identity and challenge dominant narratives through innovative game design. Cooke introduces the Transformative Constructionist Learning (TCL) paradigm and its core theory of “meta-tuning”—the idea that students are better able to adjust to new challenges through trial-and-error and experimentation in educational environments that correspondingly adjust to their evolving learning needs. In contrast to traditional education practices, which assume the neutrality of technology, Cooke approaches it as a tool for social transformation. Drawing on the TCL paradigm, she explores how the unique cultural algorithms and expressions (like popping and locking dance forms) that inform the programming and designs of Black youth represent a powerful form of resistance and creation.

Through rich ethnographic case studies across multiple educational settings, and with gaming as its experimental center, this book presents a compelling vision of how TCL and meta-tuning can help make technologies more equitable. Cooke’s innovative study offers insights crucial to scholars and practitioners in game studies, Science and Technology Studies, STEM education, and racial equity in digital learning.

List of Illustrations